The Icarus Void Read online

  ″I think I have to agree with you,″ Tybalt said at last. ″I think that both the archaeological and scientific significance of the artifact make it so that we cannot afford to leave it here unattended at this time.″ She took a deep breath. Well, she was going to go see Markov anyway. Might as well get it over with, especially before the dive, to at least plant the seed. And she needed to call the research team on the Prometheus. Why hadn't they checked in with new reports? The solar interference should have passed by now. They'd been analyzing the solar collection potential at the new safe dive levels, and Tybalt wanted to have the theoretical data to check against probables while within the chromosphere. This mission was getting more and more complicated all the time.

  ″I'm going to go find the captain before I get a few hours sleep,″ Tybalt said again. ″In the meantime, please go over these readings. Did you get enough rest during that sleep?″

  ″Yes, ma'am.″

  Tybalt hated being called ma'am, it made her feel strange. She was the youngest member of the expedition, and yet its scientific leader. But it was appropriate and she only winced internally when she heard it. ″Good. And Doctor?″

  ″Yes?″

  ″Let's focus on the potential benefits the artifact may have on our expedition in relation to data collection and dive safety. The archaeological significance can wait if and when we've assessed that. Understood?″

  ″Yes, ma'am.″

  ″Alright. If I'm not on the bridge by fifteen to dive, fire a plasma cannon near my ear and wake me.″

  Kerrick smiled. Tybalt felt the most comfortable with Kerrick; she was the second youngest, being only thirty. Straub was thirty-two, a ten year difference versus the fifteen to twenty year difference with the other researchers on the Icarus and the Prometheus, and the forty years plus between herself and the captain.

  The captain. She sighed. This mission. Not since academia had she felt so tired.

  ***

  ″And I'm telling you, I've been over it three times myself! I don't know what's wrong with the fucking thing!″

  Chief Engineer Lawrence MacConnel, known endearingly and forgivably as ″Mac,″ was shouting as loudly as he could to be heard over the din of the lower decks. And he could shout pretty damn loud when he cared to. Mac was a stout man's man, unshaven thick skin capturing every dirty particle in the air like a magnet. He was flexing his hands and popping his big knuckles at the moment, working his mind around the problem at hand. They were also dirty, continually so, but he didn't mind. He liked it down here. Above decks, where the crew and the technicians worked and walked, there was a touch of static in the air from the oxygen scrubbers, a little too much sanitization from the industrial gray and white color scheme. Down here, focusing on engines, plasma cores, and extraction facilities, Mac felt more like on Earth than anywhere else on the ship. The smells of oil and steam burst and flared about everywhere; he liked to wear an extra layer of clothing, brown sleeves rolled or collar unbuttoned so that he could sweat and smell the dirtiness of himself. The uber cleanliness of the rest of the Icarus was unappealing to him. Still, as the ship's chief engineer, he was required to walkabout all decks and between decks in crawlways and outside on surfacewalks as well. So he knew this ship like the back of his hands, could tell if something was amiss or wrong from the feel of her pitch. And something was wrong.

  Mac and Captain Markov navigated the sea of men running about the engine deck. Engineers, sometimes in protective shells, were checking and re-checking the core alignments and power couplings for potential surges, core flow, displacement dumps, everything and anything on the checklist for solar dive. They were checking it all three times over. A solar dive was an engineer's worst fucking nightmare, because it meant nerve-wracking tension for hours beforehand and for minutes during. If anything went wrong, well it was a one-way trip on the express elevator to Hell, now wasn't it? Mac liked being warm, but not that fucking warm. He wanted to feel the cool sea breeze of the California coastline again someday, and dying on a science ship was not the way to do it.

  The captain had come down because he'd been trying to get a hold of Captain Udeh on the Prometheus, but all he could get was static. Turns out that Mac had been attempting to wrangle Engineer Stross over on the sister ship as well, but the interference was intolerable. Worse than that; it was impassible. This did not sit well with Mac. If the ship-to-ship comm was out at this proximity, then something was very definitely wrong with his ship. And he didn't like that one fucking bit.

  ″I was just going over the relays this afternoon,″ Mac said. They wove around a few men who jogged by, shouting at each other. The stress was thick. ″Everything looked to be working at nominal levels. Then a few hours later I tried to get a hold of Stross. Static, just like you got. I thought it was a burst of solar wind, and made a mental note. I've had fucking preparations to make all goddamn afternoon, I didn't have the time to worry over it then. But when I came back to it an hour ago – ″

  ″When was the last time you were in contact with Engineer Stross?″ The captain's voice cut through the steady thrum of engines, men's voices, and pulsing energy flow with ease and clarity. The man would have made a fine engineer.

  ″Yesterday!″ Mac said. They turned a corner and ducked beneath a low-hanging apparatus. ″I was having reinforcement issues with the hull. For a minute I thought we might be looking more like chicken in tinfoil than hands in gloves, but Stross and I deciphered the issue and all was well.″

  ″Are the temp shields looking alright, then?″

  ″Aye! That at least is nothing to worry about.″ Somewhere in his gut, however, Mac felt like he was lying somewhat. The truth was that he wasn't sure, nor could be sure, that everything was going to go off without a hitch. Yes, the shields were in place as well, no, better than they could be, but it wasn't just the communications array that was bothering him. No, there was a lot more to it than that.

  They rounded another corner, dodged a burst of steam from a nearby vent, and passed one of the few female engineers who worked the Icarus. Like many of the men, her collar was open for her skin to breathe, revealing cleavage and sweat-soaked skin, but down here such things as tits didn't matter. That was for above-deck times. If you were down here and you could work, that was all that mattered.

  At last Mac and Markov came to the communications control relays. ″I wanted you to see this for yourself,″ Mac said. He produced a utilitool from his magbelt and with a few quick swipes unfastened the square plate over the relay board. When he pulled it aside, a maze of multicolored couplings and circuit boards were revealed. Pulses and flares of electricity jumped from relay to relay, and glass tubes filled with blue plasma changed color with the workings.

  The captain leaned in. He was seasoned enough in relay work – had done quite a bit of in his day, Mac had learned – and inspected it for nearly a full minute before pulling back and remarking, ″I don't understand. Mac, this is all in order. We should have full ship-to-ship communication transmissions without a problem.″

  ″Pre-fucking-cisely,″ Mac said. He was frustrated. He was worse than frustrated, he was pissed off. He didn't like things out of order. Not on his ship. And this was, in a long series of tense preparations and serious checklisting, very fucking out of order. ″Sir, the best thing I can think of right now, and I've gone over this three times as I said, is that there's something awry with the telecommunications array on the outer bulkhead. And right now, the way the ship is leaning, the array is on the sunlight side. Normal circumstances, I'd get a worksuit on and haul ass out onto the bulkhead to go figure out what was wrong and repair it, but the way we are right now I'd be flash-fried in an instant.″

  ″Yes, yes,″ the captain said. He was not dismissive; his eyes were jittering back and forth, lost in thought, the captain with his thought process at full tilt. ″If we bring the ship to a halt, turn it to so that the array is in the shadow, where you'll be protected from the direct sun – ″

  ″I'd th
ought of that,″ Mac said. ″It's entirely doable, and again, normal circumstances I'd say let's pull about and lean so that I could get out there, but we're in the zone, captain. All the men are pushing hard and they're in the zone. If I pull the brakes on that, the tension could mount astro-fucking-nomically high and everything would be thrown off.″

  There was a way of doing things on the Icarus. When the time came to prep for dive, every crew member on the ship went into the zone and didn't come out until the dive was done. No one slept, even if it was time for their cycle. No one ate, even if it was time for rations or they were starving. Everyone checked, double checked, and triple checked output and productivity. Everyone ensured that every system, bulkhead, and goddamn safety harness was in full working order because they were about to dive into a fucking star. In this case, the Sun itself. There was a reverence about the Sun that no other star held, and it was adding to the almost hypnotic state that the crew went into. Oh they'd crash and burn (no pun intended) once the dive was done, but until then, every man and woman worked until the deed was over with. To stop that was to call a halt to the most organized pre-game ritual ever devised. It was a hive mind almost, a pack mindset. Mac wasn't about to call time out on that for anything, if even the USDSE president was trying to make a call.

  Meanwhile, the captain's eyes kept jitterbugging. This was not a good sign.

  ″I need to speak with Captain Udeh,″ he said distantly.

  Mac shook his head. ″Begging your pardon Captain, but I don't think we can afford to stop just to make a phone call. Not now, not with prep underway, we're right here in the zone. I know it's less than six hours to go, but still. We've just started. Hanging back and holding off even now is calling for trouble.″ Mac stroked his chin, trying to think of something he could jimmy together. He had his own work to do in the preparation process, but he could possibly slip away and put together something crude to at least get the captain a chance to commune with the Prometheus. The communication error was not just odd, it was damning, but the truth was what Mac had already said: trying to stop the bull from charging now would only be trouble, and in the long run trouble not worth risking.

  The captain nodded. Again. ″Damn,″ he said. He crossed his arm and stroked his bushy mustache. ″Damn.″

  There was a noise from aft. Mac and Markov turned to look.

  One of the bridge crew came sweating down the narrow corridor, clearly unused to the engine room. Why should he be? The bridge crew rarely came down anywhere below hydroponics. Then something occurred to Mac as he saw the crewman: why was the man physically coming down here rather than using the comm system?

  Oh, motherfuck, Mac thought. He realized it even as he questioned it. Internal comms must be down too. Oh fuck, fuck, motherfuck. Why now?

  The captain must have realized it too, because he leaned forward and shouted, ″What's going on? Why didn't you call me on the comm?″

  ″We tried sir!″ The ensign stopped and mopped his brow with the back of sleeve before continuing. Poor fuck looked winded just from being down here. The humidity alone in that jumpsuit was probably going to sweat five pounds off him. Engineering jumpsuits were designed for extra airflow and breathability; by comparison the ensign was wearing a parka. ″Morrigan in systems tech has been trying to track down the cause of the error, but the shipwide comm system is offline. No connectivity whatsoever. We were trying to reach you for fifteen minutes before anyone realized it was the ship and not us.″

  Markov and Mac shared a look. The captain came as close to looking worried as Mac had ever seen, and Mac had seen the captain in some pretty damn worrisome moments without him looking like this. This was a clusterfuck coming to a boil. Solar dive, no communications in or out, and the men in the zone. Mac stared back at the captain, knowing that he was probably going to have to pull the crew back into normal gear and fuck up the works. They were going to abort. Mac didn't like the idea because it caused more problems with the crew than it did with the computer systems, but considering the ship had no way to talk inside or outside maybe it was for the best.

  ″Sir – ″ the ensign began.

  Markov raised his index finger to pause the young man, then spoke to Mac. ″I want you to get your ass on fixing the shipwide comm. I don't care about anything else, you get that fixed before we hit the dive. We're going to complete that aspect of our mission, and once we do, we're going to fix the output array and get in contact with the Prometheus. Whatever you need to do to get your engineers set up without you, do it, and then get internal comm systems back up and running. Is that clear?″

  ″Yes, sir!″ Mac replied. He breathed a sigh of relief. He could take care of the inter comm without any problems.

  ″Sir!″ the ensign repeated. He was agitated.

  ″What is it?″ Markov looked annoyed at the poor bastard's earnestness.

  ″It's the Prometheus, sir!″ The ensign wiped his brow, tried catch his breath again, and continued. ″The Captain's Boat was launched about an hour ago from the Prometheus and is en route. It's flying in our wake to keep from frying at this proximity to the sun, but – ″

  ″The Captain's Boat? Are you serious?″ Markov was incredulous. Even Mac was impressed. Captain Udeh had to have balls made of adamantine to try such a maneuver.

  ″Yes, sir!″

  Markov paused for a moment – only a moment – then turned to Mac and said, ″Stick to the plan. Inter comm. Get it running. We're moving forward with the dive.″ To the ensign he pointed forward and said, ″We need to prep the shuttle bay for the captain's arrival.″

  Mac nodded. ″Yessir,″ he said, and replaced the panel over the relay systems. He shook his head. Nothing could ever just be simple around here.

  ***

  CHAPTER III.

  Captain Okwudili Udeh sat taking in the readings from his dataport on the Captain’s Boat. He shifted in his seat, trying to find some sort of comfort; he couldn't. Udeh was wide-framed and thick with muscle, always had been since his college days, and this damn Boat just hadn't been built for the comfort of a big black man. He tried not to think of how small the chair felt to his body and kept his focus on the viewscreen.

  From this distance, the Icarus looked small and nondistinct, with nothing to differentiate it from a small frigate. Udeh knew better than that. He knew the quality of the shielding on the hull of the craft, the high-end electromagnetic force fields that surrounded the bulkheads, sandwiched between layers of tempered carbonite. Icarus was small for a science vessel but could weather a storm better than any ship in the fleet. Mostly cylindrical in shape, with a slight ventral fin protruding from the aft section of the ship. Captain Udeh knew the sensors of the ship were hidden beneath layers of shielding, unlike the massive Prometheus, whose sensor arrays jutted out and rose forth like quills. For all the analogies in the world, the Icarus most resembled an old 21st century submarine, yet large enough to still accommodate those luxuries that the USDSE provided for their crews. Udeh had often found himself jealous of Captain Markov’s position as captain of that vessel. Once upon a time he'd almost been able to get into the captain's chair, but at the last moment Markov had decided not to abandon his command. There had been an accident involving a shuttle transporting crew from the ship and Markov had taken it hard; Udeh had decided to put his name in the hat when it had been initially announced that Markov was stepping down, but ultimately Udeh was glad Markov had stayed with the ship. There wasn't anyone else who should, really. But still. Still. Udeh loved Prometheus, loved it and her crew fiercely, but just once he wished he could hold command of Icarus while riding solar winds down into the furnace.

  He sighed. Right now didn’t seem like a good time to be wishing to be in someone else’s shoes, especially considering that there was something incredibly wrong with the state of the Icarus. Doctor Tybalt’s research members on the Prometheus had been trying to send transmissions to Tybalt for over six hours now to no effect. Udeh had tried to contact Captain Markov on both off
icial and personal channels to the same result. Static. Shifting frequencies. Irresolute connections. What the fuck was going on over there? For all intents, it looked at though the crew of Icarus had no idea that they were deaf in the coming storm and were moving with precision to dive, meaning that Udeh needed to get communications open with Icarus, and quick. Once his engineers had established that it was the Icarus comms that were down and not Prometheus, Udeh knew that there was really only one way to get Markov’s attention. Sending a crewman via shuttlecraft to approach the Icarus in her wake to dock was protocol, but Udeh knew Markov well enough that he would understand the seriousness of the situation immediately if he saw the captain of the Prometheus himself coming up on their flank to dock in his personal shuttle. So Udeh had left Commander Blake in command of the Prometheus with orders to hang back just within safe approach of the vessel. If Icarus was well enough to dive, Prometheus wouldn’t able to follow regardless.

  Then there was the matter of that damned debris field. The researchers had called it an artifact area, going on about xenoarchaeology and how the only one who had any experience in the field was Doctor Kerrick over on the Icarus, and the significance of the find. Udeh understood that it was important, but it couldn't possibly be as important as their primary mission. Udeh was a practical man. Understanding evidence of alien life was something that he left to the sciences, and while the notion of exploring the cosmos was something that had always been a prime motivator for his entering the USDSE, he'd been trained as a military spaceman. Cosmic Navy. Then the research team on his ship had started talking about resilience factors and heat nullifiers, terminology that had been used for the Icarus's experimental shielding, used in reference to the largest piece of the debris field, which the scientists had begun referring to as the singular "artifact." Then he understood why it was important. That was why the scientists had been trying to contact Doctor Tybalt. And that was how he'd gotten here.